Last year on Halloween night, over eight hundred trick-or-treaters showed up to our house on Sleepy Hollow for candy. Even though we lived on Sleepy Hollow, we had no idea when we moved in four years ago that Halloween was such a massive holiday in our neighborhood.

It put us in an awkward position as Christians. We weren’t excited about joining the neighborhood legacy of boasting in violence or in darkness or in evil. But we also reallydidn’t want to be the type that draws their curtains in fear and disgust at the end of October. We wanted our neighbors to know we cared about them whatever day of the month or year it was. Eventually, our family decided we were going to engage our neighbors on Halloween with radical generosity.

And so, for the past three years, we have exclusively given out king-sized candy bars to every visitor. The first year we gave away three hundred. Last year, eight hundred. We’re stocking up as we speak and expecting a thousand people this year.

Now, your family may not be financially able to give out a thousand candy bars (the college students we work with through our church help fund our inventory), and you likely won’t have a thousand people knocking on your door this Halloween. That doesn’t mean you can’t create a culture of radical generosity right where you are with what you have.